


white blank page (where was my fault?)

by The_Curious_Wonderer



Series: various tales in a twin Hawkes AU [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, and I'm already planning a fic to fix that so, hawke twins au, really this is mostly about Varric, the death is Hawke being left in the fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 10:09:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7711018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Curious_Wonderer/pseuds/The_Curious_Wonderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric isn't paid to tell the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	white blank page (where was my fault?)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Mumford and Sons, subject is not mine, I wasted two hours on this.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @how-do-i-even-life

Varric knows two stories.

One of them is published, an idealized illustration of Marian smirking at the world on the cover, Isabela and Anders behind her the way they always had been. It aches a little, to see her face so vapid, it barely even looks like her, but they’d decided, hadn’t they? She doesn’t want people stopping her on the street, knowing exactly who she is, and the books sell better with a vapid bitch on the front.

“As opposed to a raging intelligent bitch,” Marian had snorted.

There’s the bare bones of the story in there, embellished and edited and, by the Maker, so exaggerated that Varric himself rereads it and forgets the facts.

(He could never forget the facts. They burn in his soul like embers, secrets smoldering in his heart that he wishes he could speak, and that’s what makes him such a good storyteller.)

Varric knows two stories, and one of them is a lie that everyone knows, and the other is Garrett.

Y'know, sometimes he wishes he had never put his pen to the page that had started The Tale of the Champion. There is no one is this world now that he loves as fiercely as that small broken family, and as much as he loves Marian, he knows who the true hero of their story should have been.

(“I forbid it,” Garrett had ordered, and Varric had never seen such a stubborn steel as he had in his friend’s spine, never heard Garrett do anything that wasn’t worrying and fussing and exasperated groans over Marian’s wild stupidity. “Whatever story you’re concocting, you leave me out of it, Varric.”)

Isabela had laughed through all of the sex scenes, had no holds bared as she told him exactly how far her lover could bend, the way her lips were chapped and never soft, how odd it felt to feel safe without weapons because of the woman she held in her arms.

((Varric had crossed out entire paragraphs of Garrett, entire pages, and even though he was trying to keep his friends’ characters flat and unreal, they fell too flat the second he was gone from the words. “Can I ask why?” Varric had tried during a quiet night without raiders or bandits, no apostates or corruption infringing on the study where Varric wrote and Garrett read and drank and laughed. Garrett’s smile was tired and Varric loved Kirkwall, but he could see what it did to people, how some people thrived and others felt it sink like poison into their veins, and he felt something shatter as he realized how much of himself Garrett had left broken to keep his family safe and whole and happy. How fractured, how splintered he was when they found Bethany, when Carver followed her, when he lost Leandra. How much he…))

Fenris had grimaced through the very first scene, reading Marian’s name alone and how Carver died, the lies Varric told to keep the story intact, to keep it flowing, and set it down after and never picked it back up. Carver had laughed until he cried when Varric frustratedly explained the narrative dissonance of having a warrior sister and a warrior/mage set of twins, and suggested that Varric kill him off in the beginning, the ogre that had injured him enough to make their family desperate, desperate enough to head to Kirkwall.

(((“So you see,” Garrett grinned wryly, the cracking expressions barely covering the sorrow and grief underneath. “You know.”

“It would kill her,” Varric whispers, almost to himself. “All three of them, all of us.” He doesn’t say himself. He knows what Kirkwall does to people.

“So you see,” Garrett repeated, softly.)))

Aveline knew better than most, he thinks, the dangers of Kirkwall. She didn’t fit in the way the Hawkes had, the seamless integration of kindred spirits, but she knew there were no ‘ands’ or ‘buts’ in these walls, it was life or death, and she forced herself into the works, punched a brand new cog into the machine, and changed everything because she could not accept the way things were.

Ok, maybe he was wrong about kindred spirits. Once she was there, Varric could never imagine Kirkwall without her.

It’s Aveline, with all her responsibilities, who can’t tag around as much, it’s she who pulls him aside every now and again with soft eyes and a pained smile and says, “How’s he been doing?” and, “Keep an eye on him for me, would you?”

Aveline in the story, in his book, cannot be repressed. He never learned how to make her less than she is, and somehow it’s ok. She reads the book and laughs in all the wrong places.

(After everything, Anders’ betrayal and the opening scene of a civil war, it feels like everyone splits. Bethany becomes a leader of the mages, Carver at her side, and somehow turns the most volatile site in the war into the most peaceful. He hears people saying that if you don’t want to fight, if you don’t want to rebel, you head to Kirkwall. He doesn’t bother finding out where Anders went. Merrill sticks to the alienage, keeps it under her protection. Isabela convinces Marian to sail with her for a while. Fenris and Garrett just leave.)

Anders leaves after Marian spares him. Varric never got to show him the rough drafts. Merrill's reading- words mumbled as she reads, gasps and laughter, reactions to the story she'd lived- makes up for it a little. Bethany reads it quietly and returns it without words.

((He writes Garrett’s story. The real story. He writes one copy and he keeps it in his bedside drawer and he tries to forget the facts. He could never forget the facts.))

When the Seeker finds him, he spins Marian’s story like straw into gold, unflinching and casual and never even giving her a hint that there’s anything else in this story, that there’s both more and less and everything in between that he will never tell her, and he thinks of Garrett’s bright blue eyes saying, “You leave me out of it, Varric."

((("So you see,” he says at the end of the story, “Even if I called, Hawke wouldn’t come. They’ve been through far more than enough, Seeker.” He’s not thinking of Marian.)))

There’s a woman, an elf, with light spilling from her hand and the same intensity in her eyes that Anders had, and he thanks the Maker that he can tell the difference between insanity and purpose. He watches it spread across he until she is blinding and Maker help him but he can’t help but love her, can’t help but admire they way her spark catches the kindling and the world seems to be reshaping in the smoldering of her ashes, and the knowledge that this is only the beginning, this is the start of a story-

Corypheus.

He takes everything, the terror of her almost dying, the cold of the mountain pass, the first sight of Skyhold, and he tucks it away. He addresses the letter to Aveline and to Hawke, because he knows she knows where to find her, and weeks later he finds on the doorstep not Marian but Garrett.

(“You leave me out of it, Varric,” but here he is, eyes blazing and freezing at the same time, magic crackling in the air and glaring, that same steel in his spine.)

“How dare you,” Garrett breathes, and Varric knows that this man had destroyed himself so his siblings never had to, had starved so that they wouldn’t go hungry, had taken spells and swords and arrows, and the love in him is exactly what is breaking both of their hearts. “How dare you try to bring her back to this.”

Varric slams down two mugs, the filthiest brew the Hanged Man had, the one he’d had brought in when he realized he’d be here awhile, the one he saved for spectacular fuck ups and miracles.

“Wasn’t Kirkwall enough? She finally belonged, and it was ruined because he betrayed her, and suddenly she wasn’t the hero they wanted, and they wanted her gone. And now, Varric, now she’s happy, off with Isabela, and you have the audacity to call her back and ask her to get involved, to try to shove her into another problem you need solving. What gives you the right? Why can’t you just leave us all be?”

Varric took a deep breath. “No. You don’t get to say that to me.”

“And why not?” Garrett seemed unhinged, wild in a far more dangerous way than Marian had ever been. “We were fine, we could’ve been fine if we had just stayed with Gamlen forever, if we’d never met you and your hare-brained schemes, it was when we met you that it started going wrong! We were fine until you got us into messes so big that we had to become giants, and she died when we shrank back to normal. It’s because of you, Varric, it’s all your fucking fault, and I hate you for it!”

Nothing ever hurt like that, not getting shot, not stabbed, not watching Anders destroy the chantry and Kirkwall’s unstable situation. Not even Bianca.

“I loved you best.”

Whatever retort Garrett might have had died on his tongue, and Varric could see how painful it was for him to hear it. Garrett, who couldn’t even imagine putting himself before anyone else.

“I loved you best.”

There really weren’t any words Varric could use to explain, and Garrett slumped into the opposite seat, grabbing one of the mugs and downing it. They look at each other, and he thinks, maybe, this is what his own face looked like all those years ago in the study.

“So you see,” Varric echoes. “You know.”

“I’m sorry,” Garrett chokes out. It never occurred to him, the true champion, the hero, that what would kill his family and friends to know would hurt Varric that much more. He never realized what he does to people. “I’m sorry.”

They get shitfaced and in the morning it’s the same as it ever was, except that he has to explain the truth to Cassandra and the Inquisitor, and Garrett just laughs when he hears that the Seeker tried to kill him.

(Varric is listening closely as she plans out the siege of Adamant, and he hears how she plans to go in with only Hawke and Stroud. Everyone else, she claims has a different task, something more essential to the plan. His two best friends, now, are going in alone.)

The Inquisitor is carried out of a rift by Stroud, whose face is stony as he tells Cullen that Hawke had knocked her out and sent enough of his magic through her hand to carry them through. He tells him that the nightmare had been too much, and that Hawke had made his choice.

Varric sees red, and he doesn’t remember anything until the Inquisitor joins him in his tent, face red and puffy with tears and a small barrel of shitty beer in her arms. “I wasn’t going to let him.”

Hawke never realized what he did to people.

He accepts the mug and drowns himself in it, trying to forget that he has letters to write, trying not to ask her the details, trying- trying.

They get back to Skyhold, and he opens a drawer in his bedroom, pulls out a story. And he brings it to her later, tells her, “This one’s the truth,” and then goes back to sit at his table. He has letters to write.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry?


End file.
